Old Christ Church is located in Pensacola, Florida at 405 South Adams Street, circa 1832. It is one of the oldest surviving church buildings in Florida. It was commissioned in 1832 and stayed in it’s original condition until the Civil War when the settlers fled to Alabama and the Union soldiers took it over and used it as a hospital, barracks and a stable. When the settlers returned after the war, they found the church in an awful state. The church originally cost $4000 to build and the rebuilding in 1879 cost $4500. Throughout its history, it has been a church, hospital, abandoned, a library and finally a church again. Both the State of Florida and the City of Pensacola funded a restoration effort a few years ago and it was re-dedicated as a church. The church has been remodeled to replicate the original church of 1832 at a cost of $600,000.00. 

The floors are the original pecan floors and the pews are sycamore. The ceiling of the church is called the naive, a term used in shipbuilding. When you look at the ceiling you, it looks like the hull of a ship. There were three rectors (reverends) of the Church who were buried beneath the church during the 1800's. 

During later renovation work, their graves were dug up and the three were hastily re-buried just outside the church in unmarked graves. Even later, an extension of the church was built over their graves and it was only in 1988 during an archeological dig to find the missing bodies were they found. The three bodies were then re-buried beneath the church in an elaborate ceremony. 

There is an account by a University of West Florida student, Gary Powell, a paraplegic young man paralyzed after being hit by a motorcycle. He saw something at the burial that the others were not privileged to see. This is his story: "I thought it was strange. For one, they weren’t wearing any shoes. They were wearing robes and like a scarf around the neck-they call it a stole. The one in the middle was carrying a black book-a leather covered book embossed with a cross. He was quiet, very solemn, and the other two on each side of him were cross-talking in front of him, just laughing and carrying on, and he seemed to be embarrassed by it. He had a solemn look on his face. I just stared at them. They were stair steps from one another in height. On had glasses, and one was more heavy set than the others. They had reddish colored skin, like you’d think if you touched them it would leave a white mark where your finger was. The two were just carrying on and when I took my eyes off them to look at the caskets that had been made, identical to the ones they were originally buried in, I lost track of them. I asked the person next to me, ‘Where are those three men?’ She said, ‘What three men?’ I said ‘Those three.’ She said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about. I want to watch the ceremony.’ And later on I asked someone who they were, and they didn’t know what I was talking about. I can describe what they were wearing. I stared at them. I thought they were kind of rude. That day the priest came to our table and told me that priests are buried barefooted They wear robes and have a stole around their neck, and they are buried with a black prayer book. And the three men were stairstep different in height, which these three men were. I said, ‘Gee, I saw them at their own funeral.’ The guy who built the caskets saw them, too, as he was making the caskets in his garage." 

This story was taken from the Haunt Hunter’s Guide to Florida by Joyce Elson Moore.